Two Essays by Agnes Martin

48-page manuscript book, written out in Chinese ink with gouache illustrations on handmade paper with blue Ingres endpapers and an off-white Khadi card cover with a light-blue paper jacket. Completed in May 2020

I have long been an admirer of the Zen-like quality of Agnes Martin’s paintings, which I was lucky enough to see in her major retrospective both at the Tate Modern and later at the Guggenheim in New York.

Towards the end of her life she achieved a reputation as something of a sage so I was keen to see whether her writings would shed any light on this. I found two short essays online - the first headed simply ‘Reflections’ and the second the text of a lecture given at Cornell University. Frankly, these essays are a bit of a muddle, and perhaps bear out the point that artists are not always the best verbal exponents of their work!

However, she makes a number of interesting points about the nature of ‘inspiration’ so I decided to persist with my transcription - and partly by way of homage to what I perceive to be Martin’s disciplined approach to her work (and which I suspect may have played an important part in enabling her to cope with a challenging mental health condition). For various reasons, the ‘centring down’ which writing requires is also a necessary discipline for me.

I should add that I found the paper used for this piece at the bottom of my drawer, having passed over it several times as not suitable for writing. However, I decided not to buy any new paper during the lockdown period caused by the Covid-19 crisis and instead determined to make the best use of what I already possessed, despite its rather uneven appearance.

The illustrations, of course, are based on a series of Martin’s paintings shown at the Harwood Museum of Art in 1994 - echoing, of course, the square format she generally adhered to.